


L’arbore di Diana (In Diana’s Garden)

by gardnerhill



Series: The Vermilion Problem [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: spook_me, Other, Vampire Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: When Diana and Amore confront each other, there can be only one winner.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the LJ Comm Spook Me October 2016 Halloween Ficathon. A story in my “Vermilion Problem” Vampire!Holmes series. Two visual aids provided by the mod can be found here: [Vampyre](http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab353/spook_me/Spook%20Me%202016/vampyre_by_preilly-d585n2m_zpshlbuygrl.jpg) /// [Vampyre Hunter](http://i879.photobucket.com/albums/ab353/spook_me/Spook%20Me%202016/36939_zps0ol0bugp.jpg)

The contralto.  
  
She looked very natural with a rifle in her hands, and she held it correctly. Her splendid stage costumes had been replaced by something more befitting a ‘trousers role’ in which her voice would be welcome – brown breeches, a shirtwaist, boots, her chestnut hair bound back. The simple fact that she exuded an air of unconcern though she was a woman alone in a warehouse office at night amid some of the vilest alleys in London spoke of a courage and determination unnatural to find in a woman or an opera singer. As unnatural as – I clenched my teeth; my left fist tightened on my Gladstone bag. The right one I kept on my revolver in my pocket. This…business…had nothing to do with crime nor criminals, as her perfume told me (for she reeked like a bricklayer of garlic, a substance I knew was toxic to certain residents of the city).  
  
She did not smirk nor smile at me as a stage villain might. But her tone held a levity the situation did not warrant – and the strange American accent of her speaking voice was jarring after hearing her exquisite singing. “Doctor, you are red with rage. He will be very pleased to see you in that state, a little garnish for the trencher.” Her face went still and her hands tightened on the rifle even as it remained pointed at the floor. “Stay back – I am loaded for my rightful prey, but a silver bullet will wound a man’s leg as well as a lead one would.”  
  
Silver. Garlic. She knew what would fell such as Holmes. Panic began to rise in me. _You are in combat. Keep your head._ I made myself step back and remain at attention. “I received your note.” I kept my voice as flat as possible. “Miss Adler, I believe your name is.”  
  
She bobbed her head. “Dr. Watson. I see you came with all the tools of your trades, soldier as well as physician, but then I didn’t order you to come unarmed. No, it’s all right, you can keep that gun you’ve got in your pocket. But you knew not to involve the police.”  
  
Billy the page-boy had handed the note to me, concern all over his face, saying only that some street-lounger had slipped it to him. Mrs. Hudson stood by the door wringing her hands. I was only aware of standing in the doorway with the curt summons gripped in my hand, a scrap of paper with the words I HAVE HIM scrawled in a man’s coarse-hand, with the site for the meeting. Any expectation of this being from a brigand or gang member who’d want Sherlock Holmes out of their business was quashed by the reek of garlic smeared upon the note; my terror that another knew his sanguinary secret was mingled with self-loathing that I had been too stupid and slow to track down the man, missing for weeks now, that I had begun to think of as a close friend.   
  
For the first few days I had been unconcerned about Holmes’ disappearance. It was in character for him to dash off without a word of warning on his forays around London, disguised as a drifter or peddler (and once an old woman), to glean information for one of his cases. Another, darker impetus took the man down to the wharf or the slums, gleaming-steel eyes seeking prey among the violent fugitives from justice who likewise prowled the area, a wolf seeking a wolf.   
  
***  
  
In those early days of my association with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, we learned much about each other. For Holmes all it took was a cursory look at my pocket-watch to learn much about my family life and the tragedies therein – and I discovered my singular fellow-lodger’s true nature late one night, when I found Holmes draining the lifeblood from Mrs. Hudson’s ill old dog. The candlelit image of those wide-open, glittering eyes and bloodstained mouth, teeth like a viper’s where his incisors should have shown, will not soon leave my memory. But, appalled and frightened though I was, the soldier in me rose in my blood; I looked him in those fearsome eyes and demanded that he explain himself. I had entertained some thought of my Army revolver in the upstairs room, even as most of me recoiled at the thought of putting a bullet through that incomparable brain of my friend’s – for his friend I still considered myself despite this ghastly new knowledge. But Holmes, in turn, spoke to me in a manner unchanged from our first days, and I followed him back to our rooms. By dawn I had learned much about a race most would think a figment of Mr. Stoker’s imagination.  
  
As may be imagined, my discovery kept me wary of my fellow lodger for several weeks after that (even though I had correctly deduced that, since every human being in the house had remained unmolested by a blood-drinking creature that had dwelt there for months, Holmes had had no intention to prey upon any of us). But when the police called upon Holmes one day not long afterward to come and investigate the site of a possible murder, he turned and asked if I wished to accompany him, and with that we were back on the firm footing with which we had begun our association. My first-hand observation of Sherlock Holmes employing his amazing gifts of observation and deduction soon erased much of my apprehension.  
  
***   
  
The only apprehension and anger I felt now was on his behalf. “You have him. You have held him all this time.” A fear was rising in me. Holmes normally confined his unnatural meals to a foray every four or five days – longer if he was wrapped up in a case. When I’d discovered him frantically feeding on poor old Skip that first time, he had gone nearly two weeks without striking his prey.   
  
“I normally don’t keep them. I just kill them.”  
  
The casual words froze my blood. But I looked at her more closely – not at her strange clothes or unfeminine stance, but what they bespoke. There was no sign of the pampered opera diva here, and she held her weapon with ease and familiarity. I am no Holmes but a soldier recognises a soldier. “You are a special type of hunter. You hunt … them.” The ones like Holmes.  
  
“As long as these monsters have existed, so have men – and some women– to remove them. A hunter learns much about the game he stalks, and I have been studying this game for seven years.”  She smiled humourlessly. “I saw the pair of you that night, Doctor, and I had my suspicions.”  
  
For the thousandth time I thought back to the nights just before Holmes’ disappearance nearly a month before.   
  
Holmes had received a telegram one early evening from the proprietor of a club I had never heard of before (Diogenes) and casually mentioned that he would be back after paying a visit on the sender of the missive. He returned near midnight, face grave but saying not a word about the mysterious business; he had seemed distracted all that evening.   
  
The very next night we had attended an opera together at my friend’s suggestion. He had deduced much about the stunning chanteuse who held the audience spellbound with her powerful voice. She was as broad and stocky as are many in the coloratura range, but Holmes had also observed and pointed out to me her hands as she’d gestured in dramatic grief (“See how she grips her kerchief, Watson, as if it were a weapon. Her hands are strong and well-proportioned, and were they a little rougher and less well-tended they would be more fitting for a day-labourer or a guardsman than an opera-singer”). I had enjoyed the exquisite singing – but while I had been pleasantly entertained, my friend seemed transported to the halls of bliss by the sound. Music seems almost to cast a spell on Sherlock Holmes; the quick-witted man of action at a crime scene here was listening, rapt, eyes closed, a little smile on his face, deft fingers dancing in the air to the beats of the diva’s beautiful and powerful voice.   
  
After the performance he had told me to go on back to Baker Street; he had another lead he wished to follow on a private matter. I nodded, and turned to hail a cab. That was the last I had seen him.  
  
All of this passed through my mind whilst the hunter- _cum_ -opera-singer spoke. “I slipped an extra trill into my aria, and saw him react to it, and knew what he was. I recognise the traits of these creatures – and I also know the signs of mortal enthrallment when I see them. You’re still in his grip. You searched the city like a lamb seeking his ewe.” Her eyes were level and cool, but there was a kind of pity in them.

 

“He is my _friend_.” Spoken through my teeth. Now my rage was on my own behalf, at her thinking I was some brainless sycophant. “Yes, I looked everywhere for Holmes; I looked for the friend I had made. He would have done the same for me.” I exhaled a bitter laugh. Holmes would have succeeded where I had failed miserably owing to my own stupidity – and I would have been a captive for mere days, not weeks.   
  
Miss Adler shook her head. “You still think that friendship is what binds you. There are no ‘friends’ among these beasts, Dr. Watson.” Her tone was exasperated, scolding rather than angry. “They occasionally keep mortals like us as pets, or as a farmer keeps a pig he fattens for the table. Ah, now you will angrily insist that he is unlike all the others of his kind, that he’s different, that what you two have is unique and special. So all of their poor deluded fools say.”  
  
This impudent woman claiming to know more about me than I did myself! Now I was a wretched wife, clinging to an abusive brute whilst proclaiming undying love. I kept my voice level and calm. “None in our household have ever been threatened by this man – not down to the scullery-girl. He solves murders for the police and brings human ‘creatures’ to justice. He is a benefactor to this city. No decent citizen is threatened by him.”   
  
She was as level and calm, but she was not suppressing rage as I was. “He does not touch those in your household. That only means he takes his meals elsewhere. There are neighbourhoods in London where such victims would be just another body left in an alley or dumped in the river; even the police would be indifferent. He tells me that he prefers to sup upon murderers, which is the closest I’ve seen to a conscience in his kind.” Now she did smile. “Unless he just prefers the taste of a killer’s blood. You’ve killed in the Army, haven’t you?”  
  
My outrage at her insinuation was tempered by her use of present tense to refer to Holmes. I focused on that instead, for that meant he was alive still. _He exists still_, I corrected myself mentally, for the hundredth time. (In those first days at Baker Street, Holmes’ half-open eyes and complete lack of breath or heartbeat as he lay abed till late in the morning routinely shocked me into thinking he had died in his sleep – yet my hand gripping one cold shoulder would cause him to sit up and greet me as civilly as ever.)   
  
“My chief profession is an invaluable asset, for their hearing is uncanny and the register of a particular trill can reveal them, even if they move among mortals. A little garlic, a little silver, and the rat is exterminated.” She hefted the rifle. “I learned from one of the best. A repeating rifle adapted to fire silver bullets is a good deal easier to use, if more costly, than the silver-headed pike Von Kramm preferred.” A look of sadness crossed her face. “Von Kramm had been nobility, but he was a soldier at heart – he slew mortal enemies as easily as he piked these creatures. And for all the danger he faced from them, it was a Turk’s bullet in an ordinary, stupid war that ended his life.”  
  
Hearing Holmes called “rat” and “creature” made my blood boil again. My temper has always been one of my worst traits and I fought now to keep it in check. Oddly, what kept me from exploding in rage was my reluctance to do so before a woman – even a woman who dressed and carried herself as a soldier rather than as a lady.  When I could control my voice I said, “Do you have a purpose in all this, madame?”  
  
Miss Irene Adler cocked her head to the dilapidated wooden table that served as desk in this office. On it lay a well-thumbed copy of _The Strand_ magazine. “Would it surprise you to know I’ve been reading your stories, Doctor? You disguise Holmes’ traits very well; I picked up no sign of his true nature from what you have written. He seems like just another eccentric English gentleman in a city full of such. His is a brilliant mind. And you seem a decent fellow. But that night, I saw the truth between you two, and I vowed to save you.”  
  
Again that patronizing, pitying treatment as if I had no mind of my own. I snapped, “Save _me_? By luring him away and keeping him in prison?”  
  
“Lure?” She threw back her head and laughed as a man would, with unrestrained hilarity. “You make it sound as if I used my feminine wiles on him, Doctor! No, he came to  my theatre looking for whoever had killed a pair of his fellows. More than one hunter has used the anonymity and mobility of a theatrical troupe like a duck-blind.  
  
“I saw him backstage, after the audience had left. I had a stagehand set off one of the smoke-rockets we use for fire effects – and in the split-second he was deluded by the cry of fire, I shot him. Just once, in the chest. It takes at least three silver strikes to kill the beasts. But one incapacitated him enough for me to subdue him.”  
  
“You will tell me where he is.” My own voice sounded flat and cool as a glacier, the ice that breaks mountains to rubble. “And if you have any sense of self-preservation, you will run for your life afterward.”  
  
Her eyes were dark and did not drop from my stare, though they flickered with fear at what she saw in my face. “Look at you, Doctor. Even now, you defend him. You truly believe what binds you two is friendship. This is exactly why I held him. I want – I wanted – to save you.  
  
 “Do you know how these creatures make more of their own kind?”  
  
I barely moved. But my head must have moved in a negative. A flush, not of anger but embarrassment, crept up my face. Bad enough I knew so little of these blood-drinkers and she clearly knew so much, but to have a woman discuss such biological matters in front of a man was beyond disgraceful.  
  
She smiled as if in contempt of my shame. “They feed on a victim nearly to the death, and then open one of their own veins and force the mortal to feed on that tainted blood. That contagion seals his fate, and he is made as fit for Hell as his master.”  
  
Adler lifted her rifle, and there was nothing in her face but sadness. “I will take you to Holmes, Doctor. See what he is – what he truly is, without the veneer of respectability and a full gorge. Come near him, and you will see what your ‘friendship’ is truly worth to such creatures. You have never seen this monstrous hunger in all its horror.  
  
“He will do one of two things if you draw near him. He will seize and feed on you until you die – in which case I will end him. Or he will feed on you until you are near death, and then turn you into a creature like himself. And I will end you both.”  
  
“So you will kill me after all.” This was more familiar, threats of death. I felt as level-headed as when I was in combat.  
  
“I don’t want you to die, Doctor. I want you to _see_.” Again she gestured with the rifle. “This way.”  
  
Finally. I moved where she indicated, out into the echoing brick tomb of the half-empty warehouse – one of dozens on this dock alone, a needle in a haystack for which I had looked but which had jabbed me instead.  
  
Dread and grief and anger warred within me; in the end self-loathing triumphed.  
  
When I realised that he was missing and not merely away, I’d returned to the theatre and found no trace of Holmes, nor anyone who’d seen him. I had searched every hospital, charity house and morgue for him – and had forced myself to pass it off lightly to Lestrade when I called on the station to find out if they’d heard from him. I had sent the Irregulars scattering to every street and alley. I had looked for this “Diogenes” club throughout London, in vain – no one had heard of it, no plate announced the locale in any of the major clubbing districts. (One establishment in Pall Mall actually had a marble sculpture of an old Greek holding a lantern in front of it, but the stout doorman had apologised for the misunderstanding over the Philosopher’s Club and sent me away again.) I had travelled through the Limehouse district and along the docks. I had spent a fortune in shillings and half-crowns asking for information and tips. Finally, in an act of desperation that would have made Sherlock Holmes laugh in derision, I had looked through most of the cemetaries and old churchyards in the city, seeking disturbed coffins or signs of nocturnal activity. (“That book is nine-tenths fairy-tale and one-tenth correct information, Watson.”)  
  
And after all that, I had failed. I had failed him.  
  
When I saw the yellow light of Miss Adler’s lantern flicker on a broad wooden trapdoor in the floor that led to an underground cellar, normally reserved for storing barrels of wine or spirits, I felt my hands grow cold. A hook and rope was threaded through the large iron ring, which led to a winch and pulley to open the vault.  
  
Her voice behind me, still as level and matter-of-fact as a soldier reporting a message. “He told me that he fed last three nights before I caught him. He has now spent a full month without a man’s blood on his lips.”  
  
A _month_. He had been driven frantic by hunger after nearly two weeks, feral eyes and bloodied teeth on the old dog’s corpse greeting my horrified sight that night.  
  
I took hold of the winch and turned it, raising the heavy trapdoor. The stench that arose from the stone vault was like that of opening a week-old grave, and I could not hold back a sound of revulsion.  
  
Adler still looked grave, even with the self-satisfied tone of having been proved right. She stepped forward and called down into the makeshift tomb, “Good night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!”   
  
How can I describe the cry that arose from that vault? An unearthly wail of agony, thin and sharp, bounced off the walls of the warehouse and filled me with ice to the marrow of my bones. There was nothing in that sound I recognised; this was a shriek that would have had me fleeing out of a churchyard crossing myself and reciting the Lord’s Prayer.   
  
The grim-looking huntress regarded me face to face, rifle pointed down once more. “Your ‘friend,’ Dr. Watson.” She held out her hand, fist closed. “Take these.”  
  
Apprehensive yet cognizant that I had little choice, I withdrew my right hand from my pocket and held it out. Three heavy metal balls thudded into my palm, ringing together like merry bells in that ghastly vault. Silver.   
  
“Go to him. Be a soldier. Show him the one act of mercy you can bestow. If you cannot, and are lured in to your damnation, I will be your second.” She looked down at her rifle for a moment.   
  
I clenched my fist around the cold things. I wanted to fling them across the warehouse. Instead, I shook my head and opened my hand. “Keep them. I intend to save him.” I glared into her eyes. “I will bring him up out of there, no danger to decent people.”  
  
“You cannot.”  
  
“I will prove you wrong.”   
  
After a long pause, she reached out and took the three balls from my hand. “I only wish you could.” Again that sadness on her stern face. “Take your courage with you.”  
  
I about-faced and headed to the maw. The vault was accessed by a wooden staircase; I headed down into the reeking pit to see what had become of Sherlock Holmes. Warm yellow light glowed after me; she had set the lantern down on the top steps. I had no doubt that the compromised light would not impair her aim.   
  
For months I had looked the other way whilst he had headed out in the evening and returned late at night bearing a rosy flush on his cheeks, as if he were merely a tabby cat sauntering out to make short work of a rat infestation in a granary. I set down my Gladstone and straightened. I would turn away no longer.   
  
_Holmes._  
  
She had chained him to the wall; there was no lock, the links were simply attached to eye-bolts in the mortar of the stone room. Possibly their original use was to secure casks atop each other.   
  
He was still in the street-clothes he had worn that last night, though they were ragged and torn where the chains had rubbed against them (and gouged into his flesh). But the creature – the _man_ – wearing them was a gaunt, skeletal and bone-white figure. White-pupiled eyes, like those of a dead fish, stared from within hollowed sockets. His mouth was open between jutting cheekbones, displaying the two front razor-sharp incisors that resembled those of a vampire-bat’s; they gave him the appearance of a human with rat features. His black hair that had always been carefully trimmed and groomed back now hung down in lank locks in his eyes, a madman in Bedlam. Another screech emitted from the chained figure, and his bonds rattled as he lunged at me, mouth open and white tongue flicking as if tasting the air, white eyes staring. With nearly every scream air wafted out of him like the stench of a lime-pit.   
  
I stood before him, just out of his reach. “Holmes,” I said as sternly as I could, for my heart was breaking. “Holmes, look at me. It is I, Watson.”  
  
Another screech, a creak of the chains that held the starveling creature – that held _Holmes_ – in place. Mouth open, nostrils flaring. Did he see me? Or was I merely a cask full of blood to him now?  
  
“Holmes!” I shouted over the keening sound. “You are Sherlock Holmes! It is I, Watson! John Watson! _Your_ Watson!”  
  
Only that same indrawn screech, and the feral gleam in the fish-eyes like a badger in a trap.   
  
“For God’s sake, dear fellow!” I cursed at the crack in my voice. “Remember who you are!”  
  
Another screech, the hands reaching. I might as well be crooning “Puss, puss, puss” to a snarling tiger.  
  
The yellow lantern-light flickered over both of us. I thought of the hunter who stood behind me atop the stairs, waiting to kill one or both of us. No. I would make Holmes remember who we were.   
  
Remember. Memory. Which sense is tied most closely to memory?   
  
I reached into my coat pocket, and some part of me was amused that an English gentleman can create a moment of normality in the most abnormal of situations. “Miss Adler,” I called up without looking away from the snarling, screeching captive. “Do you mind if I smoke?”  
  
“Not at all.” She sounded almost amused herself.   
  
I tried not to think about firing squads as I pulled out my cigarette case and a box of matches. I lit up and drew in a lungful – sweet indeed after this grave-stink – before exhaling a cloud of smoke into Holmes’ face.   
  
The screeching – paused, for a moment, as the sensitive nostrils flared.   
  
Again I inhaled, and blew the smoke into the face of the man who had identified over a hundred different types of tobacco ash – and who knew the smell of my favoured brand of Bradley cigarettes.   
  
A moment of silence, broken by a short, soft cry. The next moment he shrieked and lunged at me again.  
  
Exultation filled me at having my answer.   
  
“Good God!” Adler exclaimed.   
  
She had seen it too. He knew.   
                                                                        
“Sherlock Holmes is still in there,” I called. I dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with my foot as I removed my coat and let it fall behind me. My heart pounded in terror and recklessness; I had not been this alive since I had been in combat. Words fell out of my mouth. “I’m going to feed him.”  
  
“Then you’re going to die, or become one yourself!” Adler’s shout wasn’t anger, it was fear – and not for herself at all. “Doctor Watson, the only things keeping him from tearing those chains out of the wall right now are the bullet inside him, and his deprivation. When they’ve been starved this long one of them can drain four or five men to their deaths. You’re going to give him some of your blood and think that’ll appease him? You’re throwing a bean into a lion’s mouth.”   
  
Lions? I remembered a dog.   
  
I continued speaking to Miss Adler as I tore off my cuffs and rolled my shirt-sleeves to the elbow. “He had been starved for two weeks when he awoke to feed, the night I learned about him.” I bent down and rummaged in my doctor’s bag for the instrument I had not used since returning from Afghanistan. “And for all that, with me mostly a stranger to him, and him ravening, he still turned away from my door and headed to the kitchen to feed from an animal instead. And even that act of predation was a mercy, for the poor beast had been in pain from cancer.” I straightened and approached the screeching Holmes. “Where did you shoot him?” Please, not in the back.  
  
The first response I heard was the sound of her rifle cocking. “The right side of the chest.”  
  
She was going to let me do this. That profane outburst of hers spoke of a buried hope. But she was prepared to end this if it went wrong – and wrong it could go.  
  
I had sawn off limbs from shrieking soldiers whilst bombs exploded near me. A bound, howling patient in shadowed light and the threat of death from behind was nothing new. Aching at the sight of his bloodless flesh gouged and torn from the chains he’d fought for weeks, I leaned my forearm and most of my weight across his icy, bony breast and reached into the little open wound with the bullet extractor as he screamed and lunged at my bare forearm, teeth snapping and dead eyes fixed on the prominent vein that lay along its back, just out of reach. His ghastly incisors gleamed, so close to me I could see the tiny serrations on each of the sharp little things.  
  
In. Steady.  
  
And out. Again the merry tinkle of silver as I dropped the pellet to the stones below, followed by the extractor.  
  
The screeching in my ear stopped. The narrow chest heaved beneath my arm. The chains sounded, not a struggling rattle but the straining creak of dray-work. I heard a grating sound from the other side of Holmes – the eyelet in the mortar was moving. A rising whine came out of Holmes. Shaking with terror and grief, I made myself glare into those dead white-pupiled fish-eyes, even as the body I pinned heaved again, pulling, the chains burying themselves into his flesh. Another scraping sound. His whole body moved away from the wall a fraction. They were loosening.  
  
A soldier’s command voice bellowed into the vault from behind me. “Doctor, step aside!”  
  
“Not in this lifetime!” I roared. The icy body strained against mine; the whine rose; the eyelets scraped. “You can damn’ well shoot us both afterward if you like, but not until I’ve tried to save him!”  
  
The teeth gaped, reaching. My jugular was just beyond those tiny knives. The next pull at the chains, the slightest relenting on my part, and I was under his control.  
  
No, not his control. I was not his thrall, not his victim, not his Christmas goose. I was his friend, and he was my friend. I would control this. He would not even make a wound on me.  
  
I dared not go back to my Gladstone and leave him within her aim. I braced my forearm under his throat and fumbled in my pocket. There.  
  
With a tanging sound one eyelet flew free.  
  
I leaped back half a head’s breadth from the gathering predator, and in that time I had my pocket-knife open. As the last chains tore loose, I stroked the blade across my left wrist, laying open the vein.  
  
“TAKE IT!” I screamed and thrust the bleeding wound directly into Holmes’ open mouth, pushing it at him even as he flew at me. Teeth clenched, I braced my feet and kept my wrist pressed to his lips and my body close to his, awaiting the moment when his unnatural strength pulled me down to finish feeding on me.  
  
Icy claws gripped my forearm. An icy tongue swept over my slit wrist, lapping at the blood like a dog.  
  
Holmes’ entire body jolted. The fish-eyes widened, blinked, and – were clear and shining again. A cry arose from the mouth sealed to my wrist – a cry so soft that my eyes filled. The clawed hands … trembled.  
  
“Take it, my dear,” I whispered, tears rolling from my cheeks. “Please.”  
  
The cold tongue stroked the wound. Again that whimpering cry.  
  
My other hand came up and stroked the ragged black hair back from his forehead, over the disbelieving dark eyes. “You will be all right, Holmes,” I said softly, and embraced him with my free arm. My heart thumped hard in my chest, not out of fear nor grief now.  
  
He continued to lap at my arm, making that soft cry. His icy body trembled, and was icy no more. Warmth stole up from my gashed arm and swept through my veins like an injection of morphia. Bliss filled me, and unbearable tenderness. I kept him close, murmuring my apologies for not finding him, for being so slow-witted and useless when he needed me. I awaited the inevitable signs of drastic, fatal blood-loss – the extreme thirst, cold, faintness that would send me to the flagstones. Instead I felt only an aching protectiveness, courage, strength.  
  
Cold hands – hands, his strong graceful hands, and not a fiend’s ice-claws – squeezed my forearm. It was Holmes who pulled away first; my blood limned his mouth but his teeth were covered, the incisor-fangs I had never felt in my flesh once again hidden from sight. His long cool fingers were wrapped firm around my wrist, sealing the wound. His ragged clothes still hung over his galled chain-marks, but they were nothing. I looked up into the clear grey eyes of Sherlock Holmes.  
  
“Watson.” Barely a whisper.  
  
“Yes.” My cheeks were wet. “Yes.”  
  
He continued to grip my wrist tight. “You live. You live still.” Disbelief.  
  
“This little bloodletting?” I smiled. “I took worse in Afghanistan, and came home to you. How are you?”  
  
“Exhausted. In pain all over. Ravenous.” He smiled. “Much better. Better than that.”  
  
“I know.” I looked at the hand around my own, my blood running through both of them now. “I felt it too.”  
  
Holmes stared at the same site, his head still moving in disbelief, eyes bright. “In all my monstrous existence, I’ve taken blood from the violent by violence. I’ve savoured their fear, their hatred. None before ever offered it with love. That little draught...”  
  
He was himself, and I lived. I had saved him. Saved him for –  
  
Fear once again rose in me, now solely for my companion. “Miss Adler!” I called without looking behind me.  
  
“The woman!” Holmes looked past me, eyes up. Astonishment in those clear sane eyes. “Watson, she is gone.”  
  
I turned around. The lantern still sat on the top step of the vault, but the opera singer and huntress Irene Adler was not to be seen.  
  
“I do believe she has left.” Holmes turned his head, nostrils flared just a little. With his return from his starveling state, the grave-stench had been dissipating, mixed though it was with the last of my cigarette. “The garlic scent is far away. She is not lying in wait for us.” He nodded over to where I’d left my Gladstone. “I need to bind your wrist.”  
  
When Holmes released my wrist to retrieve the bandages, any thought I had about having Anstruther stitch it for me vanished in astonishment when I saw that the gash held together – just barely, a fragile connection more appropriate for a cut finger than a major severed blood-vessel. The blissful warmth still ran through me. I looked at Holmes as he wrapped my wrist, and thought of his tongue. Perhaps some form of saliva produced this quick mending, the narcotic state. My medical curiosity stirred awake, now that my month of dread and grief was gone.  
  
I collected my coat and bag, and in retrieving the bullet extractor I saw something gleaming on the ground. It was the silver bullet that I had pulled from Holmes. I pocketed the little toxic pellet and led the way up the stairs.  
  
The thin red line of dawn lay on the horizon as we left the warehouse and made our way through the stevedores and watchmen; a pair of battered and bedraggled-looking men blended right in with the men of the docks. The sun was not yet up by the time the cab we’d managed to find dropped us off at Baker Street – where Holmes only just kept a weeping Mrs. Hudson from throwing her arms around him, to my great amusement. My blood-loss, on top of the stress of the prior month and culminating with the events of the night, caused me to devour both sumptuous breakfasts our good landlady brought up and most of the generous pot of tea, whilst Holmes took a very long bath.  
  
When he lay down on his bed to sink into that otherworldly torpor of his that passed for sleep, I collapsed beside him; the thought of being out of his sight just at the moment was unbearable. I could still feel the cool course of my blood in his body, and I knew that what we had been to each other had just undergone a profound change  
  
***  
  
“I have not been as forthcoming with you as you deserved, Watson.”  
  
It was much later that same day. Both of us were scouring the evening editions after spending most of the day dead to the world, seeking any sign of the events of the snight and the woman who had triggered them, in vain. Holmes still bore a slightly-ragged look to him (his dressing-gown hid the rapidly-healing chain-galls, and a trip to his barber would mend the rest). I felt a good deal better myself, and currently savoured a glass of sherry to enrich the blood I had retained.  
  
I set down my Amontillado and glared at him. “Perhaps, Holmes, you will trust me more in the future when dealing with matters regarding your kinfolk.”

“I will.” Holmes returned his attention to his teacup (tea, I had learned to my great amusement, was the sole exception to my friend’s avoidance of mortal victuals). “And there is much I need to tell you about the Diogenes Club. For now, let me only say that two of its members had been slain; the proprietor suspected a dedicated hunter, which is why he set me on the case. Which led to our evening at the opera.”  
  
A club for such as Holmes. I shivered. No wonder I had been unable to find it.  
  
A knock at the door announced our page-boy. “Message, sir.” Billy grinned under his shock of flame-red hair to see his employer returned.  
  
Smiling, Holmes approached to take the note, but halted. “Watson, if you would.”  
  
Puzzled, I arose to take the message from Billy – but any query I had died unspoken at the slight tang of garlic eddying from the plain folded paper. Cold fear gripped me again.  
  
Only when Billy was back downstairs did I open and read the message aloud for both of us:  
  
**_My dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes:_** _Congratulate yourself. You are the sole fiend ever to have survived an encounter with me. For that, you have Dr. Watson to thank. In my career I have seen nearly a dozen human souls turned into monsters, but this is the first time I have seen with my own eyes that a monster may be given a human soul. I must confess that my scientific curiosity at this event is stronger than my desire to destroy all who bear your blood-contagion. I plan to keep you both under observation, from a safe distance. Perhaps you two will keep each other on a correct path, if I understand the Greek concept of_ symbiosis _well enough._  
  
_England has become a little too hot for me, and I shall need to find another country where I may continue this aspect of my work untroubled. My followers here may mourn my loss, but every great diva ought to have a mysterious exit. And despite its deleterious effects on a coloratura’s voice, I may take up cigarette-smoking – it may prove useful in my other line of work._  
  
_I leave you both only with this warning: I was not the only hunter in London. Keep to each other and leave ordinary mortals in peace._  
  
_Very truly yours – Irene Adler._  
  
I looked up from the note into the clear grey eyes of my friend.  
  
“I shall have no difficulty following her last missive,” he said, and there was a tenderness in his tone and his gaze that was new. “The thought of gorging myself on a stranger now repels me.”  
  
I thought of the warmth that still swam in my blood despite it having suffered a loss. “I’m relieved to hear that.”  
  
Holmes returned to his paper and shook it open. “In the meantime, my dear Watson, if I were you I should hang that retrieved silver bullet on my watch-chain. It will serve as an admirable visual reminder for me, every time I see it.”  
  
***  
  
And that is the story of how Sherlock Holmes was outmaneuvered by a woman’s wit, and how his sanguinary nature was tamed by a man’s love. We did not try to find where Miss Adler had fled, for we have mutual secrets to keep. When we go out we look for people who smell of garlic and silver, but have not found them.  
  
To Sherlock Holmes Irene Adler eclipses every other mortal adversary in his centuries of inhuman existence through nearly every country in three continents – and when he refers to her, it is always with the honourable title of _the_ hunter.  



End file.
